"Fingri?"
Leon stared at the dark-blue spirit standing before him, completely dumbfounded.
Moments earlier, a notification had appeared:
[You have been invaded by the Darkmoon Knight "Fingri"!]
Initially, he'd assumed coincidence — same name, different person. He hadn't expected to find the actual man himself.
Wait. Darkmoon Knight? Fingri's always appeared as an ordinary phantom before — never blue.
...Oh. New covenant.
"Where'd you find a new covenant?" Leon asked.
Reading the room, Maru and the others lowered their weapons. This clearly wasn't heading toward a fight.
"Wait — don't. Don't talk to me right now."
Fingri visibly teetered on the edge of a full breakdown, turning his head away like a sulking child.
How to describe the sensation. Somewhere in the neighborhood of mid-monologue, deep in your best chuunibyou role-play, delivering the coolest possible line your favorite character had ever spoken —
Only to realize an acquaintance had been watching the entire thing.
And not just one.
Regardless of how naturally carefree Fingri usually operated, his entire body had gone rigid, cold sweat running down his spine. Whatever excitement he'd felt collecting ears had evaporated completely.
He had, in essence, snapped clean out of character.
Hand over your ears — why in the world did that seem like a good line to shout?! My life is over!
"Um…" Leon noticed something was wrong and reached instinctively for something comforting to say.
From his angle, honestly, this hardly registered as catastrophic. Fingri had shouted one embarrassing line.
For actual reference: footage of Darrick howling at an empty sky had been duplicated thousands of times over and distributed for public entertainment. Bedford City had run it on repeat for an extended stretch at one point.
That was genuine social death.
These days, Darrick howled openly in front of anyone without a shred of concern for perception — and the louder he went, the more delighted the crowd got. Wolf-howling had basically become a Farron Guard tradition at this point.
Right then, Fingri thrust his left hand out toward Leon, cutting off whatever he'd been about to say.
He dragged his right hand roughly through his hair, wrecking his carefully arranged little wolf-tail style into complete disarray. His expression sharpened suddenly.
He spoke slowly, deliberately, one word at a time:
"You've mistaken me for someone else. My name is Rigfen."
"He's completely given up," Maru observed, flatly.
"This is so damn annoying. Give me your ears."
Fingri's eyes had gone entirely lifeless, all vigor drained out of his voice along with it.
Apparently, denial had become the strategy — full commitment to self-destruction, all the way through.
Leon found himself entirely without a response. He could, somehow, understand exactly the state of mind Fingri had fallen into.
"Forget it. I've wanted a real fight with you for a while anyway."
Leon drew his sword — reconsidered, switched to the Carian Knight Sword instead.
"Let's see the actual gap between me, tempered through everything the dungeon's put me through, and you — a genuine Gold-Rank."
Once the fight began, the result genuinely surprised Maru and the others. Leon, wielding the Carian blade, was holding roughly a 60-40 split against Fingri's constant motion.
Had Leon's strength actually crossed into Gold-Rank territory?
Once Fingri stopped playing around and committed to fighting seriously, though, the split shifted fast — 60-40 the other direction, edging toward 70-30.
Working purely with the sword, Leon simply couldn't keep pace with Fingri's output.
And Fingri's Variant Flash Spell was genuinely unfair. Mid-combat, he could trigger a flash effect that closing your eyes did nothing to counter — guaranteed to open a fatal gap in defense.
Leon genuinely wanted to shout: That's completely underhanded!
Not long into the exchange, Fingri planted his feet and began charging Gravity Slash with both blades. The gravitational pull built steadily.
It wasn't just Leon feeling it — even the spectators Leon had specifically asked to observe were caught by the field, dragged slowly toward the flashing blades and gathering sword-light.
Since he was already pursuing full commitment to the bit, Fingri saw no reason to hold back. He'd become "Rigfen" completely — abandoning any pretense of consistent character, muttering assorted original Darkmoon Knight lines as he fought.
He looked, from any objective angle, mentally compromised.
Leon exhaled.
He planted the Carian Sword into the ground and pulled out his reverse-grip swords instead.
Worth noting: he carried two matched pairs. One enchanted with Swift Slash — extreme burst speed, trailing heavy sword-energy in its wake. The other carried Blind Spot — locating and striking from angles an enemy genuinely couldn't defend against.
Both Ashes of War were, functionally, purpose-built for PvP. And critically — both carried brief invincibility windows.
In this world's frame of reference, a combat skill's invincibility frames functioned roughly like an advanced Flash spell in magic terms. Nothing conceptually alien to anyone here.
Leon watched Fingri's gravitational field intensify further and drew the Swift Slash pair.
If he wants to pull me in, why not simply go to him first?
An opponent standing perfectly still made a genuinely ideal Swift Slash target.
"Oh? Instead of running, you're coming toward me?" Fingri's twin blades danced faster, more enthusiastic.
Confident he could turn Leon into ground meat within seconds.
"My teacher used to say — call out your skill's name mid-battle."
Leon dropped into a lower stance. Right at the edge of Fingri's blade radius, he shouted:
"Swift Slash!"
His body vanished.
Fingri registered him reappearing behind — didn't bother turning, since his own attacks could reach behind him too.
Mistake, Leon. My back isn't—
"BOOM!"
A massive line of white sword-energy erupted, force enough to forcibly cancel Fingri's Gravity Slash mid-charge and physically stagger him.
"Huh?"
The impact had landed like getting slammed by a full shield-bash from something the size of the Cursed One.
Swift Slash carries that much force?!
Fingri's brow tightened. He couldn't work out how Leon had passed cleanly beside him without eating the trailing sword-energy.
Luck?
He reset his composure fast. Carian Piercer forced Leon back, followed immediately by a five-shot Magic Glintblade opening. Right as the first Glintblade launched, the Variant Flash Spell triggered, then Gravity Slash chained straight after.
The whole sequence flowed cleanly.
Also, arguably, extremely underhanded.
"Swift Slash!" Leon activated it again.
Fingri smiled.
Miscalculated the distance this time.
Once forced back by Carian Piercer, a second Swift Slash charge would land Leon directly in front of him — precisely inside Gravity Slash's effective radius.
I predicted the prediction.
Right as Fingri prepared to spike the killing move's power —
"Blind Spot!"
Huh — swapped mid-sequence?
Leon vanished instantly. His voice landed a beat later, from behind and to the side.
"No. I just stood on a level above your read."
His reverse-grip blade drove clean into Fingri's kidney.
"AAAGH!"
A howl echoed across Irithyll — genuinely more magnificent, in raw volume, than Darrick's best effort.
Some time later.
"You're back?"
Inside the Church of Yorshka, Matilda took in Fingri's return, a thread of leftover reproach still coloring her voice.
"Nothing happened, right?"
"I'm fine."
Fingri kept a hand pressed to his left kidney. Damage to the phantom body never carried over to his actual body, technically — but his brain registered the pain anyway, apparently unwilling to fully cooperate with the loophole.
He held up two ears for everyone to see.
Proof.
A Proof of the Covenant.
The victory, though, hadn't come cheap. He'd barely managed to work out counters for Swift Slash and Blind Spot in real time, and the cost had shown up entirely on his kidney. By the end, other Leon party members had gotten in supplementary hits too — which explained why only one ear had actually made it home with him.
"You really can't underestimate anybody."
Fingri muttered to himself and slid down the wall to sit, quietly working through the aftermath of what qualified as psychological injury.
Tusk and the others gathered around, curious about the mechanics of the new covenant. Genuinely new, no known catches yet — worth trying for themselves.
"No catch. No drawback. And once you're in, you can actually talk to the goddess Gwyndolin herself."
Everyone rushed the altar with real enthusiasm.
If Gwyndolin had been present to witness the scene directly, she probably would've felt at least some genuine satisfaction watching her covenant come back to life.
Fingri tried placing both ears — the original one found beside the altar, plus the one earned from Leon — onto the altar surface.
No response.
"Same system as the Warriors of Sunlight, apparently. Probably a threshold before anything triggers."
He muttered it and turned to leave.
A fog gate flickered into view once more.
Gwyndolin's genderless voice reached through it.
"O Darkmoon Sword, welcome back. I have witnessed all thy efforts. Continue to hunt the enemies who oppose the gods, and I shall grant thee my protection through the power of the Dark Sun and Dark Moon. Should thou require my strength, I shall lend it fully."
Fingri couldn't fully rule out imagination, but something in the tone had genuinely softened compared to before — sincere this time, rather than the flavor of empty ceremonial promise.
Oh my god. Even without meeting the threshold, I still get personal encouragement from the Dark Sun directly?
She's genuinely kind.
"Feeling motivated again, suddenly."
He caught himself mid-thought — the corners of his own mouth had curled upward without permission.
Wasn't that he was easily flattered, he assured himself.
The one delivering the encouragement was the Dark Sun. A genuine, established goddess.
He still had no confirmation on what exactly the fog gate the altar showed him actually was — a pre-programmed illusion tied to the covenant's flavor text? Or genuine real-time contact with Gwyndolin herself?
Either way — direct communication with the actual figure who'd founded a covenant blew every other covenant experience clean out of the water.
Could the Warriors of Sunlight talk to King Gwyn directly? Could Darkwraiths hold a conversation with the Abyss itself?
As for the Farron Guardians —
The Old Wolf hadn't died yet, technically, had he?
Maybe there was a version of contact possible there too.
For one brief, dangerous moment, Fingri felt the genuine urge to offer up his heart and shout something dramatic into the sky.
Rational thought, mercifully, suppressed it in time.
"The monsters outside won't even approach this place."
He checked through the window, confirming the perimeter was genuinely clear.
Then the boy surfaced in his memory — still hiding in that house, alone.
If I tell him about this location, he'd actually be safe here, wouldn't he?